


Globular Clusters

by lunarlychallenged



Series: Don Quixote [4]
Category: Maniac (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, globular clusters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 15:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18013568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: “To dream the impossible dream, that is my quest.”Dreams and reality don't always mix well.





	Globular Clusters

Annie dreamt, she assumed, of globular clusters.

Maybe they weren’t actual lives she’d lived; it wasn’t as though she remembered them all. That being said, Owen’s presence as not-Owen seemed like a dead giveaway.

 

 

“There’s something under the bed,” Jack whispered. He’d thrown the blanket over their heads, pulling her close to him. She’d thought that he was going to kiss her neck, or that spot behind her ear that always made her heart stutter, but it turned out that his breath was already erratic.

“What?”

His voice was little more than an exhale. “I can feel the mattress move sometimes. There’s something down there.”

Martha frowned at him. They didn’t have pets. They didn’t—couldn’t—have kids. There was nothing in this house to be under their bed. “You just had a bad dream.”

“I didn’t. I mean it.”

She sighed, sucking in her cheeks. “Jack, go to sleep. It’ll all be better in the morning.”

“If there’s nothing wrong, why are you whispering?”

She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the raw panic on his face. Maybe it was how quiet it was in their small room, and how many things seemed possible in the dark. Maybe it was that after everything else that happened in their few years of marriage, this might as well happen. There might as well be something—someone, she told herself, she hadn’t believed in monsters under her bed since she was six—under their bed.

She wasn’t sure why she was whispering, but she was sure that it would be funny if they just went back to sleep and pretended nothing was wrong.

She put an arm over his waist and put her head on his chest. “Sleep,” she mumbled. “It’ll all feel better in the morning.”

Maybe it would have, if a few minutes later she hadn’t felt the mattress press up into her side.

A while after that, something scraped against the floor.

“Jack?”

“It’s still there,” he said, voice steadier than before.

“I’m scared,” she said. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever admitted this, certainly not to him, but it was the only coherent thought she had.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he breathed. His breath whispered around the shell of her ear; normally that sensation would have made her stomach kick, but it felt like her stomach was trying to digest itself now. “I’m getting out of bed.”

“What are you—”

“Shhhh. Listen to me. I’m getting out of bed. If something grabs me, you have to run.”

She frowned at him, heart pounding. “No! I’m not leaving you.”

“Yes, you are. Maybe we can’t both survive this—”

“Jack, I can’t—”

“But one of us might,” he finished. “It should be you.”

“There is no reason why I would leave you,” she whispered harshly. 

“Sometimes people leave,” he said. A tingle began at the base of her spine. Something wasn’t right, this was different, she knew this—“and we don’t know why.”

Jack pulled himself free of the blankets, put his feet on the floor, and Martha screamed.

 

 

Annie liked to think that she was brave, but she hadn’t been able to breathe since waking up.

She didn’t believe in monsters.

On the TV, two kids were sitting in some dining hall, pigging out on desserts. The girl’s face went almost comically statuesque when the Jello started to jiggle. Something about dinosaurs, Annie thought, though she hadn’t been paying much attention. She’d been too busy watching Owen watch.

“Turn the movie down, Owen, Jesus,” she griped. “I can hardly hear myself think.”

“Isn’t that the point of a movie? To stop thinking for a while?” Still, he knocked the volume down a couple decibels. 

He’d told her once that he hadn’t really liked movies for a while, when he hadn’t been able to see anything without believing that there were hidden patterns inside. These days he watched them ravenously, compulsively, like these little escapes gave him a life much better than the world they lived in.

Sometimes Annie watched them with him, with bowls of popcorn and boxes of Milk Duds cradled between them. Sometimes she’d swing her feet into his lap, pretending not to notice when his hands went up to touch them.

She did it now, simultaneously annoyed and relieved that her thick socks kept her from feeling the warmth of his skin against hers. “Owen?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t ever want you to sacrifice yourself for me again.”

“What?” He looked at her then, face slack while he thought. Was she talking about the time with the hawk? Being arrested after the lemur fiasco? Something he was clueless about, but that he was still accountable for? “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Just promise.”

“I’m not promising that,” he said. “Sometimes friends sacrifice things for each other.”

“Maybe other friends do. Not us.”

She could see the words on the tip of his tongue—‘especially us,’ but he just gave her a jerky nod. “Alright,” he said wearily. “No more sacrifices.”

She adjusted her feet in his lap, burrowing in deeper. “Good.”

 

 

There was another funeral going on right across the hall in the funeral home, and it came as a welcome distraction. 

Sammie did not like smiling at people while they apologized for her loss. She did not like the way they side-eyed her when she did not look appropriately unhappy.

Don was a grade A douchebag. She wasn’t happy that he was dead, but she was happy to be rid of him. She would never have been able to afford a divorce.

She made some excuses about needing to use the bathroom, about needing to see if the police escort was ready for the procession, and on and on and on.

Sammie walked across the hall.

She walked past grieving family members, all of whom looked as sad as she should have done.

She walked up the center aisle.

She walked up to the casket.

There was a young woman inside, blonde and lovely and undoubtedly dead.

Sammie knew the girl’s face, but she did not know why.

Sammie felt like, somewhere in the distance, she could smell cake.

Sammie felt like, somewhere in the distance, she could smell formaldehyde.

 

 

Annie did not make it to the bathroom before vomiting. She knew that she wasn’t going to throw up again, but she rested her head against the toilet seat anyway. It was comforting for a reason she couldn’t explain.

Owen knelt in the hallway, piling carpet cleaner on the place she soiled. “Are you okay?”

“Obviously not.”

“Are you sick?”

“No,” she mumbled. Then, after a second, “did you know that Ellie could memorize a song after hearing it just once?”

Owen sat on the ground. “No.”

Of course he hadn’t. Annie never talked about Ellie, not unless forced. Owen was not the forceful type.

“It was anything. Movie dialogue, music, quotes.” Annie leaned away from the toilet, swallowing thickly. “It was annoying.”

“I can quote things at you, if it makes you feel better,” Owen said.

She snorted, then cringed at the acidic taste it propelled into her mouth. “What can you quote?”

“Don Quixote, for one thing.”

Annie, healthy or not, had not finished the book. “Did you finish reading it?”

“More than once,” he said. “A man who can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and thinks that he has to save people? It’s practically my life story.”

“Hmm.”

“You probably chose that book to pick on me.”

She smiled. “Sure thing, dummy.”

“‘According to an ancient and common tradition in the kingdom of Great Britain, this king did not die, but was transformed into a raven by the art of enchantment and, in the course of time, he shall return to rule again and regain his kingdom and his scepter.’” Owen’s voice, creaky at first, took on a steady rhythm by the end of the passage.

“That’s made up,” Annie said. “He turned into a bird?”

“The pattern is the pattern,” Owen said.

 

 

Willow was a waitress. Mark was the bartender. 

She did not think that he was cute.

Except when he stuck out his tongue while he opened a new bottle of something or other, maybe, but other than that.

She did not think he was funny.

Except when he would give flawless imitations of the customers, but that was only a few times per shift. No big deal.

She certainly didn’t think he was sexy.

Apparently, possibly, maybe she did, since she currently had her tongue in his mouth.

“Just—just hang on—hafta move the bottles,” he said, carefully maneuvering things out of the way before hoisting her up onto the counter. He seemed a little nervous, hands trembling a little while they undid the tie of her apron, but his mouth was sure against hers.

She couldn’t remember wanting to kiss him before, but the rub of his stubble against her cheeks made her want to do an awful lot more than kiss him. Maybe that would make things awkward between them the next time they shared a shift. Maybe she would do this at the end of every shift, pulling him closer, closer, closer until she forgot what it was like to be far away.

“Wait,” Mark said.

She pulled back a little, the tip of her nose still ghosting against his. “What?”

“Are you, you know, sure you want to do this?”

Absolutely. Willow was feeling about ready to lose her mind.

He raised his arms to help her pull his shirt off, and there was a tattoo. Just under his left armpit, below the border of hair, was a faded inking of a camera.

Mark leaned in to kiss her again, but she pulled back, frowning.

A camera in his armpit.

“What’s up?” Mark smiled, a little nervous now. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she murmured, squinting her eyes shut. “No, it’s just—the tattoo—”

He frowned, raising his arm again. “The camera?”

“No—yes—something about it—”

 

 

Annie gave up on sleeping, hoping that coffee would kill the mind-mush she was wading through. If it hadn’t been four in the morning, she might have asked Owen to make it; he somehow made it better than she did these days.

It wasn’t that she liked the dreams. For all of her flaws, Annie did sort of like herself. More and more as the days went by. The dreams made her real life feel fake, or faded. She always got up and questioned which life was the real one.

“Annie?” Owen stood in the doorway to his room, squinting into the lit kitchen. “Is everything okay?”

She plastered on a thin smile, pulling the mug closer to her chest. “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s early,” he pointed out.

“Turns out the world exists before nine AM. Who knew?”

He hummed, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He grimaced when he tasted it. Hers was always too bitter, somehow, while his was rich and filling and Jesus-God, how could two people follow the same procedure and get different results?

“Just some weird dreams,” she said quietly, and he nodded.

“I get it. You should try to get more sleep.”

She smiled again, this time a little more genuine. “Today’s a big day.”

“You say that every day,” he said back. That little light flicked on in his eyes, bigger than a smile would have been, and she washed down her feelings with a swallow of coffee. “Goodnight, Annie.”

“Good morning, Owen.”

He went back to his room, giving her a full view of the matted curls at the back of his head. He looked younger when he first got up—like he’d never been broken.

Sometimes waking up from the dreams made it difficult to meet his eyes for hours.

Sometimes waking up from dreams made it hard for her to look away.


End file.
